Chuck Schumer ends talks with Tom Coburn on guns

Sen. Chuck Schumer is ending the bipartisan gun control talks with Sen. Tom Coburn without a deal, a major setback to President Barack Obama’s effort to pass universal background checks.

Schumer will instead file a place-holder background checks bill he proposed before the Coburn talks began that does not incorporate any of the input from the Oklahoma Republican and Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). There will be no co-sponsors when the legislation is introduced for the Senate Judiciary Committee markup on Thursday.

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Meanwhile, Kirk, Manchin and Schumer will search for conservative Republicans to back the bill they negotiated with Coburn but with the record-keeping requirement the Oklahoman opposed. The three do not plan to introduce the bill until others have signed on. Manchin admitted Monday that it will be difficult for any Republican to join gun control friendly Kirk and moderate Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) without cover from a more conservative colleague.

Kirk and Manchin released a joint statement saying they will not support the bill Schumer introduced alone but will continue the work the three began last month.

“We are committed to continuing to work in a bipartisan effort with Sens. Schumer, Coburn and others in order to find a common-sense solution for enhanced background checks, however, Sen. Schumer’s current proposal is one we cannot support as it stands today,” the Kirk-Manchin statement reads.

“Our goal is to pass a bill that will close loopholes in the current background check process in a way that does not burden law-abiding citizens,” they added.

Coburn “is still hopeful they can reach an agreement,” said his spokesman, John Hart. But Schumer and Manchin are not yet willing to concede to his demand that no records be required for private gun sales.

The White House declined to comment on the end of the Coburn-Schumer talks.

Gun control groups had been optimistic that with Coburn’s cooperation they could win as many as 70 votes in the Senate, including Republicans like John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Saxby Chambliss. Without Coburn on board, the task is far tougher.

The end of the bipartisan background checks talks also raises the possibility that all that can pass is the gun trafficking legislation introduced earlier this week. That bill is seen as far less important than the background checks proposal yet much easier to pass.

A Schumer aide said Coburn and the group never could agree on whether to require private sellers of guns to keep sales records, as is required of gun dealers.

“Sen. Schumer is not prepared to negotiate away the record-keeping requirement in its entirety, lest it make the law unenforceable,” the aide said.

Gun control groups that have been tracking the Senate talks began writing off Coburn weeks ago and said they will seek to attract other GOP senators to their cause.

“We saw several paths to 60 a month ago, and now we’ll take them,” said Mark Glaze, director of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns. “It would have been great to have Sen. Coburn, and still would. But no rational strategy would ever have relied on such an unlikely bedfellow.”